The tears just kept coming, pooling under Erica Byars' glasses. Natalie Corson wiped them from her bride's cheek.
Just moments before, standing in the soft light of the Pulaski County Courthouse's stained-glass rotunda, the Rev. Randy Eddy-McCain, pastor of the Open Door Community Church in Sherwood, declared the couple "wives under the laws of the great state of Arkansas" midmorning Friday. Byars, 38, and Corson, 30, were the second same-sex couple of the day to get marriage licenses at the courthouse.
The couple was packing for a move to Hot Springs when they got a phone call from Corson's brother telling them of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that struck down same-sex marriage bans nationwide.
"We got dressed, just got in the car and came here," Corson said. "We didn't even shower."
"Today's a day in history, and we wanted to be a part of it," Byars said.
The date is important to Byars for another reason. Eighteen years ago to the day, Byars' mother's body was found at a rest area outside of Hot Springs. She'd committed suicide two days before.
"Her biggest regret about me being gay was that she wouldn't be able to see me get married," Byars said. "But there's a reason this came down today. I feel her here with us. She's here."
Once she finds it in the mess of moving boxes, Byars will slip a braided silver band on her wedding finger. It was the ring her mother gave her the last time she saw her alive.
For Corson, the marriage license means that she'll be able to be by Byars' side in sickness and in health. Byars has psychogenic nonepileptic seizures -- sometimes up to 15 a day. Corson has been her caretaker. When Byars went into an intensive care unit in Jacksonville for three days in July, Corson could only gain admission by telling nurses she was a sister; only family members and spouses were allowed to enter the room.
The seizures became so severe that Byars could no longer work, and the couple has been homeless since February. When they couldn't find a relative's couch, they spent nights trying to fall asleep in their car.
Byars applied for disability, and when she was approved, the couple started making plans to find their own place.
Come July 1, the couple will have keys to their new residence -- their first home together -- in Hot Springs.
"We will move into our house a married couple," Corson said, wrapping her wife in a hug and blinking back tears.
Now they can start planning a ceremony, Corson said. She's always dreamed of a springtime wedding at the Old Mill in North Little Rock, with purple and baby blue for the colors.
"I just never thought I'd actually be holding a wedding certificate," she said.
While Corson and Byars were celebrating the right to marry, in another courthouse 30 miles away, another couple obtained a long-awaited marriage license.
John Schenck and Robert Loyd, both 65, were the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in Faulkner County on Friday.
Schenck and Loyd are both beauticians in Conway. They've been together for 40 years and live in a large, Victorian-style house painted bright pink. The home, dubbed "The Pink House" by locals, is surrounded by a rainbow-hued picket fence.
In 2004, the couple got a marriage license in Canada, but on Friday they paid the $60 for a gender-neutral marriage license issued by Faulkner County. Loyd said his wedding ring is a replica of one that Prince Aly Kahn gave actress Rita Hayworth before their 1949 wedding. And Loyd's wedding shoes were a sparkly silver pair of flats, a more comfortable pair than the replica, ruby-red Wizard of Oz slippers he'd first considered.
The couple's trip to the courthouse came just a day short of the 46-year anniversary of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gathering place for gays in New York's Greenwich Village and Schenk's workplace at the time. The next day, as people rioted in the streets, Schenck went to work as usual. Shortly afterward, police came inside and handcuffed him, he said.
"I've been fighting for gay rights and equality since June 27, 1969, 46 years ago tomorrow," Schenck said Friday. Loyd piped in. Holding a photo of himself from his service in the Army, he said, "I was in Vietnam, and fighting for our rights until today."
Loyd's battle, for an Arkansas marriage license, at least, ended Friday.
Metro on 06/27/2015